Keras: Guardians of Hades Series Book 7

by Heaton, Felicity

  The double doors beyond Calistos burst open.

  Hades strode in, his crimson cloak swirling around his ankles as the pointed tips of his metal boots scraped the wooden floor.

  His blue eyes sought Keras.

  “The gate has moved.” Hades made a beeline for his eldest son, and everyone parted to allow him through. His gaze scanned the map and he leaned to his right and planted the sharp tip of one of his onyx talons into a realm far from the palace. “I have lured the gatekeeper away and have summoned Thanatos, Nyx and their allies.”

  Hades wasn’t messing around.

  Ares looked from the map to Keras. “You got this?”

  Keras nodded. “Remain here with Megan, Aiko and Eva.”

  “Now hold on a minute.” Eva’s jaw-length black hair swayed outwards as she quickly spun to face Keras, a dark look entering her sapphire eyes. She palmed the gun she had been checking, looking for all the world as if she was considering using it on Keras. “I’m going too.”

  Her gaze shifted to Valen.

  Seeking backup.

  His expression softened as he stepped towards her, as he lifted his hand and went to touch her face.

  She backed off a step, hitting him with a scowl. “You dare.”

  “Baby—” he started.

  “Don’t you baby me!” She moved back another step and his face crumpled, a war taking place in his golden eyes as he stared at her.

  He was right to force her to remain behind with Ares and the others. Eva was strong, for a human, and skilled, but this was a fight for immortals. Eva would be a liability out on the battlefield, a distraction for everyone on their side. Everyone would want to protect her for Valen, and that could prove disastrous.

  “Stronzo,” Eva muttered, some of the fight leaving her as she continued to stare at him.

  He smiled slightly. “You know me—always a dickhead. Don’t make me lock you in a room or some shit. Please?”

  Her slight shoulders sagged.

  He would do it. Enyo could see that.

  Valen ran a hand over his violet hair and then held it out to her. “I just need to know you’re safe. You can hate me all you want. I probably deserve it. Hell, I’d rather you hate me for a year than see you out there in the thick of things for even a second. I want you by my side, you know that, but I need to know you’re safe and you won’t be safe out there.”

  Her black eyebrows furrowed, hurt glittering in her blue eyes.

  She was silent for a long time, and then finally murmured, “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “I swear it. You know me—always careful.” Valen smiled tightly.

  Ares chuckled, the warm sound out of place in the moment. “She knows you and that’s why she’s asking you to be careful, idiot.”

  Valen huffed and glared at him.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Marek offered.

  “We’ll keep an eye on him.” Caterina looped her arm around Marek’s.

  He nodded and petted her hand, briefly looked as if he wanted to order her to remain at Keras’s house too. The look the hybrid female issued him said it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Someone has to protect Megan with Milos.” Cassandra’s pale blue eyes shone with fire, flakes of it dancing amidst the icy colour of her irises, and the sense of power she emitted rose sharply as she stared at the point Hades’s talons had marked on the map.

  A low grunting growl came from the direction of the fireplace.

  Everyone looked there.

  Milos cracked an eye open and looked at Cass, shuffled until his back was to her and used his large tawny feathered wings to hide everyone’s view of his face. His tail twitched, the furry tip thudding against the floor.

  The guardian deity wasn’t happy about being left behind.

  Cass went to him, eased into a crouch and tried to pet him, but he lifted his huge head and bared his yellowing fangs at her, making the sorceress look like an old-fashioned lion tamer as she held her hand out in front of her.

  “We talked about this,” she murmured, staring into his golden eyes. “I know you’ll come if I need you, but I want you to stay here and protect Aiko and Megan and the others. You don’t want your girlfriends getting into trouble, do you?”

  Ares muttered something about being adequate protection for the women.

  Milos looked past his flattened wings to the females Cass had mentioned, a calculating edge to his eyes. He pushed onto his feet, a great hulking beast that made Cass look tiny, and strode towards Aiko.

  He shifted as he walked to her, his wings shrinking into his back and white fur spotting him in places as he transformed back into a small domestic cat. When his transformation was complete, he leaped at Aiko. She caught him and hugged him close as he purred, stroked his head and smiled up at Esher as he gazed down at her, looking somewhere between lovesick and sick with worry.

  “Be careful,” she whispered and angled her head up, closed her eyes as he dropped a kiss on her lips, earning a growl and a hiss from Milos.

  Apparently, the guardian deity was very serious about protecting his girlfriends.

  He went as far as swiping with claws out at Esher when he pulled back.

  “Little prick,” Esher muttered with a glare at the cat. “Don’t think I didn’t notice the presents you’ve been leaving all over the zen garden.”

  Esher sobered and looked at Keras.

  “The zen garden?” A hopeful edge laced that question.

  “It was mostly intact when we left.” Keras rounded the table and gripped Esher’s shoulder. “Any damage that has happened to the mansion can be reversed. Cass has already confirmed that.”

  Hades’s blue eyes landed on Esher. “If you win this war, then you will not need to return to the mortal realm. Whether the mansion is repairable matters not in that case.”

  The look Esher gave their father said it all.

  He wasn’t planning on staying in the Underworld.

  A few of the brothers exchanged glances, looks that revealed they were considering the same thing.

  Enyo could understand Valen wishing to continue living in the mortal world, since Eva was human and was very determined to carry on with her work as an assassin. She could understand Calistos’s decision to return there too, since Marinda had spoken several times about completing her education to honour her father, something that had only improved Enyo’s good opinion of the furie.

  But Esher surprised her.

  He despised humans, and with good reason. The thought that he would want to continue living in the mortal realm, subjecting himself to them when his history with them made it difficult for him to be near them, physically and mentally pained him, made no sense to her at all.

  Esher’s blue eyes drifted to Aiko, lingered on her as she petted Milos. Her dark gaze lifted from the cat to lock with Esher’s, and a hint of crimson climbed her cheeks. Perhaps it was a combination of things that had Esher wanting to go back to the mansion when the war was over. His love for his home, and his love for Aiko.

  And possibly a desire to overcome his past so he could erase the hate he felt towards humans and could grow to like them, just as he had grown to love Aiko.

  Esher and Valen would need to visit the Underworld regularly with their women, staying periods of time in this realm to be near Persephone and Hades so Aiko and Eva would eventually absorb the power those within their sphere were exposed to—a power that would render them immortal too. The effect would weaken in the mortal world, slowly pushing them back towards being human, but a stay in this realm would strengthen it again.

  The brothers filed from the room one by one, those who were remaining behind moving to an area of comfortable seating and beginning to talk.

  Enyo looked across her shoulder at Keras.

  He squeezed her hand. “We should prepare.”

  She had brought her armour with her and had stored it in his room, on a stand next to his. A trickle of nerves, or possibly excitement, ran through her
as he led her upstairs, as they dressed in silence.

  War.

  She could feel it already, brewing inside her, rousing her battle instincts.

  It was hard to tame the wild need to surge onto the battlefield right that second, with or without the brothers and their women.

  With or without the allies Hades had called upon.

  She took her sword from the stand and fixed it to her belt, drew the weapon and stared at it as it caught the light and shone at her.

  Hunger raged through her.

  Pushed her.

  Keras’s gauntleted left hand came to rest on her right one and she tore her gaze from the blade, lifting it to lock with his green eyes. They shone with amusement, and a hint of fear.

  “This is a scouting mission first and foremost. We do not know what to expect.”

  She nodded and sheathed her sword, reined in her urges and tried to tamp down her instincts. It was hard when those instincts hummed in her veins, filled her with a buzz that had her raring to go.

  “We will observe the gate from a vantage point and see what we are up against before we do anything. Do you understand?” Keras’s firm tone had her nodding, battling with herself to soothe the need to fight.

  He was right. They had to go about this in a more tactical fashion. Their forces were limited and there was a chance that the furie who had captured Marinda had joined with Nemesis and the army she had been amassing in secret.

  The thought of fighting an entire legion only increased the excitement that flowed through her.

  She tried to hide it from Keras.

  Tried and failed, judging by how the corners of his sensual lips curled into the semblance of a smile and amusement lit his eyes again.

  “It has been too long since I have fought by your side like this.” He lifted his hand from hers and slid it along her jaw, gazed down into her eyes as his grew hooded and his voice lowered. “All those wars we fought in centuries ago, and before every single one I wanted to kiss you. I ached for it, a slave to the fear I might be struck down and never know the taste of these lips.”

  He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip, the cool kiss of metal sending a shiver down her spine that ignited her blood.

  Enyo tilted her head up, as eager for his kiss now as he had been to kiss her back then.

  She had never feared battle. Never feared dying. Now, a sliver of her heart feared both of those things. Because she feared being parted from Keras again.

  He dropped his head and kissed her, his lips softly dancing over hers, pouring warmth through her that chased the cold fear away and had strength flowing into her again.

  Nothing would part them.

  She would make sure of that.

  He gathered her to him and teleported.

  Warm wind buffeted her and she broke the kiss and looked down into the valley far below her. At the blonde female who pulled an unwilling Marinda towards the gate, flanked by four valkyries and defended by six of the huge demonic males they had battled in the mortal world. A force Enyo and her side could easily contend with now the brothers didn’t have to wear their limiters and Hades’s allies would be joining them in the fight.

  This was going to be almost too easy.

  Keras grabbed her arm and yanked her down into a squat beside him on the bluff, and she frowned as she glanced at him and found him staring not at the furie and her group, but beyond them.

  Enyo looked there.

  And cursed.

  There had to be close to two hundred males and females gathered between the gate and the furie, and the one who stood just in front of them told Enyo they weren’t there to protect it.

  They were there to breach it.

  Nemesis.

  Chapter 26

  Keras lunged for Cal and grabbed his arm, exerted his will and stopped his youngest brother from teleporting. Cal turned stormy wild eyes on him, the wind that chased around him building as Valen seized him too, and Esher moved to block his view of the valley.

  “I know you need to go to Marinda, but to rush headlong into battle without a plan would be foolish.” Keras had wanted to say reckless, something Cal was most days, but his brother had been working hard to curb that trait of his, had grown more mature and serious in the weeks since he had met Marinda.

  Plus, Keras could understand his brother’s desperate need to launch into action.

  He looked down into the valley at the gathering force. If it had been Enyo down there, held captive by his enemy, he would have stepped straight to her too, would have shunned all reason to reach her and free her.

  To have her back in his arms.

  “We just need to assess what we’re up against,” Esher whispered with a glance at the valley bottom.

  Steep mountains surrounded it on all sides, jagged and black, fractures in their faces bleeding lava that turned the sky orange and heated the air. This part of the Underworld was still forming, pushing back the boundaries of the realm to expand it. Every year the realm grew in size, land masses growing to eat away at the abyss.

  Keras had tried to grasp the science of it once and had only come away with a headache.

  Mortals viewed the universe as ever-expanding into nothingness. The Underworld was going through the same process. Entire regions had been formed in his lifetime, areas as vast as a continent.

  The valley stretched at least two miles long, with a flat bottom shaped like the tip of a spear. At the point of it, the gate shimmered, the colourful rings bright against the black rock as they rotated horizontally above it.

  Unlike the gates in the mortal realm, the ones in the Underworld were always visible.

  Visible but locked.

  As it stood, the gate was safe, but that would all change if the furie reached it with Marinda. They would be able to use the powers they had siphoned from him and his brothers to open that gate and form the link between the Underworld and Tokyo.

  Once the gate was open, they would attempt to shatter it, damaging it in a way that would force it to remain open long enough for the two realms to collide and bleed together.

  All Keras’s side needed to do was stop them from reaching the gate. Which sounded far easier than he knew it was going to be. Nemesis had gathered a strong force. Even at this distance he could sense the strength of some of them, and the power the scarlet-haired goddess emitted had grown stronger too. It slithered over his skin like an oily slick, a disturbing sensation that made him want to rub his arms to rid himself of it.

  Had she grown stronger because the belief of the males and females she had convinced to join her side was fuelling her, or had she always been this strong but something about her realm had kept her power limited?

  It wouldn’t surprise Keras if his father had tampered with the laws of her realm to keep her power in check.

  Valen released Cal when he nodded, his black gauntleted hand slipping from his wrist. It was strange to see all his brothers garbed for war, wearing the same red-edged onyx armour as he did. Like him, they had omitted their crimson cloak though. War was no place for something the enemy could easily grab and use against you.

  Keras flexed the scarlet tips of his gauntlets against Cal’s wrist and then released him.

  A mistake.

  Calistos disappeared in a swirl of black smoke.

  “Damn him,” Daimon muttered.

  “Little fucker,” Valen bit out.

  Keras echoed both of those sentiments.

  He fixed his gaze on Marinda and stepped, trusting that his brothers and Enyo would follow him. He had wanted to wait for Thanatos and Nyx to arrive with their army, but that was no longer an option. He couldn’t leave Calistos to fend for himself, and his gut said his brother was about to land in a whole heap of trouble.

  Keras appeared in the middle of pandemonium, was struck by wind the second he touched down and sent flying into one of the enormous demonic males. The male grunted and his scarlet eyes widened as he shoved Keras off him, realisation dawning in the
m. The daemon lunged for him instead and Keras was swift to leap backwards, barely avoiding being grabbed.

  A pretty blonde female crashed into the male, the swirls and spikes of the dark gold metal bikini she wore barely covering her breasts and the juncture of her thighs, revealing far more than was decent.

  A valkyrie.

  Fire lit her golden eyes as she turned with a snarl on Calistos, shoved off the daemon and knocked him down as she sprang back towards his brother. She was little more than a blur as she launched at him, her half-leather half-feather wings beating the air and her clawed talons reaching for him.

  Daimon appeared in her path and grabbed her by her throat. She hissed and kicked at him as ice spread over her tanned skin, flashing sharp teeth in his face. His white-haired brother didn’t flinch as she railed, as her golden boots connected hard with his shins and her talons raked over his black armour.

  He closed his hand around her throat and white spread up his black gauntlets, formed spikes of ice along his forearm that glittered in the amber light from the lava flowing down the mountains.

  “Any idea what her charm is?” Daimon flicked a glance at Keras as he dodged left, avoiding a blow the daemon brute aimed at him.

  He launched his shadows at the male, tearing a roar from him as they engulfed him. “No idea.”

  But she would have one.

  All valkyries had a charm they wore, an enchantment that protected her and made it impossible to kill her. Before he could scan her for something that looked out of place, the other three valkyries shot down from the sky and attacked Daimon as one.

  Cassandra bit out something in Russian and struck one with a sphere of violet light that sent her shooting back into the air. She hurled another spell at Daimon, and a thin blue barrier appeared around him in a wave, knocking all the valkyries back and forcing the one he had been holding away from him.

  It severed the arm of one of the valkyries.

  The sorceress grinned.

  It fell from her face when Daimon spoke.

  “Only going to slow her down.”

  Cassandra’s pale blue eyes widened as the blonde female beat her wings, the golden feathers at the tops of them shimmering in the light as she lifted into the air.